The Mayne Centre Lecture 2015 by Dr Mary Eagle.
Augustus Earle 1793–1838 is evoking interest internationally these days as virtually a mind-traveller whose take on events and activities in his time, long ago, chimes with our sensibilities in the twenty-first century. Earle’s travels (the last of which was with Charles Darwin on The Beagle) took him across the world’s continents – Europe, (Northern) Africa, North and South America, Australia, Asia and India – with stop-offs at islands in the cold South Atlantic, warmer Pacific, and the Mediterranean sea. In this talk about his three years in the Australian colonies I ask whether, by choosing to represent the conventional imagery of colonial life, he positioned himself to give an unexpected twist to the meaning? Or did he try but fail to conform to the mind-set of Britain’s empire makers?
Dr Mary Eagle is an art historian, author of a number of books and curator of several exhibitions of Australian art. She studied at The University of Melbourne, and during a long career has been art critic for The Age newspaper, a curator in various capacities, Head of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia, and more recently a Research Fellow at the Australian National University, and Harold White Scholar at the National Library of Australia. She is slowly writing a manuscript about the travelling Anglo-American artist Augustus Earle (1793–1838).
Image: Augustus Earle, 1793–1838
Near Sidney (i.e.Sydney) from the summit of the South Head close to the
Light House, used as a blacksmith’s shop, N.S.Wales, c 1825 (detail)
Watercolour, 22.2 x 31.1 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection; NK12/36
National Library of Australia
